Last night while watch­ing TV, my wife and I had an inter­est­ing debate on the whole “The Secret” phe­nom­ena. And we came to the very same conclusions.

I believe in the law of attrac­tion. I also like the premise behind the book, which is largely influ­enced by Wally Wat­tles’ 1910 book, The Sci­ence of Get­ting Rich.

But with all the “new-​​wage” gurus out there giv­ing it a bad rap, the law of attrac­tion is get­ting an unde­served rep­u­ta­tion. Some peo­ple even call it the “flaw of attrac­tion.” How­ever, the real flaw isn’t with the secret in itself, as some suggested.

It’s with how some peo­ple have bas­tardized it for their own self­ish greed.

Here’s the problem…

Read the rest of this post or share it »

A dis­grun­tled, aspir­ing copy­writer wrote me demand­ing clar­i­fi­ca­tions. He believes most copy­writ­ers lie and exag­ger­ate their claims of wealth. Let’s call him “Chuck.”

I under­stand where Chuck is com­ing from. Because I’ve been where he is. So I responded, not because I wanted to acqui­esce to his demands but because I wanted to give him hope, ideas, and, dare I say it, a million-​​dollar education.

He says he will be ask­ing other copy­writ­ers the same ques­tion, and even threat­ened (although, that may be too harsh of a word) to pub­lish my reply. I’ve decided to take the lead myself, and pub­lish it here.

For all I know, this copy­writer may be gath­er­ing infor­ma­tion to cre­ate his own prod­uct. Who knows? If he is, I must say that his strat­egy is bril­liant. A tad decep­tive, but bril­liant. Regard­less, if he does cre­ate a prod­uct out of this, good for him!

But I’m reprint­ing the con­ver­sa­tion here not just to take the lead but also because I believe it will help a lot of other strug­gling copy­writ­ers out there. Also, I’m open­ing myself a lit­tle more than usual. I guess you can say that I’m expos­ing the real “Michel Fortin.”

My answer might sur­prise you…

Read the rest of this post or share it »

The Sci­ence Of Get­ting Rich by Wal­lace D. Wat­tles is a time­less clas­sic writ­ten many years ago. Over a cen­tury ago, in fact.

But it’s a prac­ti­cal, step-​​by-​​step guide whose thought-​​provoking prin­ci­ples and strate­gies, though they were writ­ten in 1910, are still very much applic­a­ble to this day. And prob­a­bly more so.

I’m a firm believer in the idiom that you are what you think. And this book dri­ves that point home. So I highly rec­om­mend that your read this book, which is brought to you free on this website.

Read the rest of this post or share it »

“Are you green and grow­ing, or ripe and rot­ting?“
– Ray Kroc (Founder of McDonald’s)

What is a prob­lem? There’s a say­ing, which says that obsta­cles are what hap­pens when you take your eyes off your goals. I don’t agree because prob­lems can occur even when you are focus­ing on your goals. How­ever, I would cer­tainly agree that obsta­cles are what hap­pens when you take your eyes off your pri­or­i­ties. In fact, to the con­gru­ent per­son, prob­lems are not prob­lems but con­sid­ered as grow­ing pains.

You are always grow­ing no mat­ter what. Change is, in essence, the result of grow­ing. A “Help Wanted” ad caught my eye when it said: “We embrace change by hir­ing peo­ple who cre­ate it.” We do cre­ate our own changes. We are always grow­ing, always evolv­ing, always chang­ing. There­fore, since we can not stop that growth, the key to liv­ing a ful­fill­ing life is to choose how to grow and to grow in the right direction.

Read the rest of this post or share it »

“Strong lives are moti­vated by dynamic pur­poses.“
– Ken­neth Hildebrand

While sta­tis­tics prove that 90% of heart attacks hap­pen on Mon­day morn­ings, it goes to show that moti­va­tion doesn’t come from work. In real­ity, most peo­ple find them­selves work­ing in jobs they hate.

Some wake up in the morn­ing feel­ing lethar­gic and hit the snooze but­ton one too many times. Some work only “for the week­end” and take more time to pre­pare their vaca­tions than they do their own lives. And some who become “worka­holics” end up work­ing them­selves either out of a job or into a grave. In short, get­ting moti­vated by one’s work is impos­si­ble. In fact, get­ting moti­vated by any­thing out­side of one­self is impossible.

Read the rest of this post or share it »

Now that I’m back from my hon­ey­moon, my inbox and forum have been flood­ingly busy! In fact, one thread on my Copy­writ­ers Board gar­nered so much inter­est that it cre­ated close to 10 pages worth of posts.

It’s a member’s take on “Michel Fortin’s Suc­cess Secret.”

Dale King, the author in ques­tion, pos­tu­lated that in every post and arti­cle I write, there’s a “secret” to my suc­cess. Although he hinted that the secret can be found in the book “Think and Grow Rich,” the rea­son why the thread became so pop­u­lar was because Dale never revealed it until the very end.

It’s a great exam­ple of the Zeigar­nik effect and keep­ing peo­ple inter­ested in your copy. It was so pow­er­ful that some peo­ple became out­right pissed off at Dale’s reluc­tance in reveal­ing “the secret” and posted harsh com­ments as a result.

In order to assuage the dis­grun­tled, here’s what I said. The secret is…

Read the rest of this post or share it »

I wrote this arti­cle ages ago. And I never pub­lished it on my web­site, but have had it pub­lished in ezines and such. And recently, cer­tain events in my life have made me real­ized how much I do exactly what I taught many years ago, and prob­a­bly even more so now.

And today, with the advent of blogs, I believe this arti­cle about keep­ing jour­nals has even greater mean­ing and power. So I did a lit­tle search and dug it up. Today, I’ve decided to reprint it here for you.

It may sound a lit­tle too wacky or too meta­phys­i­cal for some of you. And I respect that. But the essence of the mes­sage is impor­tant, and more impor­tant than how I chose to deliver that message.

So please read with an open mind, because keep­ing a per­sonal suc­cess jour­nal can be one of the most pow­er­ful mar­ket­ing tools in your arsenal.

Read the rest of this post or share it »